Dunn homers twice as Reds down Astros

HOUSTON (Ticker) -- All-Star Edinson Volquez has been anything
but that since the "Midsummer Classic." He set out to change
that on Wednesday.

Adam Dunn homered twice and Volquez ended his post-All-Star
break malaise, leading the Cincinnati Reds to a 9-5 win over the
Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park.

Roughed up for nine earned runs over nine innings in two starts
since the break, Volquez (13-4) allowed just one earned run and
five hits with a walk and five strikeouts over 6 1/3 innings,
winning for the first time since July 12 at Milwaukee.

"The difference tonight? My head," Volquez said. "When you get
your head in line with home plate, you can make your pitches. I
was aggressive tonight, a lot of strikes. All my pitches were
good tonight. I threw my curve and my slider."

"That was a long time coming," Baker said of his pitcher's fine
outing. "He threw like he'd been throwing early in the year,
except for a couple of pitches. The main thing, he was throwing
early-count strikes. He spotted his fastball (and) his pitch
count was low. There were a couple of mishaps, but that was the
main

thing, he threw better fastballs."

Dunn, a Houston native, put on quite a show offensively,
launching a pair of solo blasts in the second and the fifth as
part of his three-hit night to take sole possession of the major
league lead with 32 homers.

"Me and Jake (hitting coach Brook Jacoby) worked on a few little
- I guess - tweaks," Dunn said. "It seems like I've been seeing
the ball better this month. ... Well, not seeing it better, but
I've been swinging it at pitches I've normally been taking.
Maybe it's the ash bats, I don't know."

Each home run came off Wandy Rodriguez (6-4), who did not make
it out of the fifth inning for the first time since April 19.

Ken Griffey Jr. also homered off Rodriguez, sending a three-run,
425-foot blast into the upper deck to give the Reds a 5-0 lead
before Dunn and Edwin Encarnacion hit back-to-back shots off
Rodriguez and reliever Chad Paronto to make it 7-0.

"The pitch was a fastball right over the middle to Griffey,"
Rodriguez said. "I tried to throw a fastball away right there,
but I missed it. In that situation, I really wanted a ground
ball. But on that play, he hit a home run, so all I could say
was, 'Oh, no, I didn't want that.'"

Hunter Pence, who had two of Houston's nine hits, homered in the
bottom half of the fifth before the Astros scored four unearned
runs in the seventh to make things interesting.

"That guy really has some explosive stuff," Pence said of
Volquez. "That is the bottom line and it is really too hard to
hit both his pitches. The ball just explodes out of his hand.

"I was looking for a fastball and his pitch, I think, ran back
over the plate a little more than he wanted. It had a lot of
movement on it, but it was a ball that I could get a lot of
barrel on."

Volquez should have been out of the inning unscathed, but two
fielding errors by shortstop Jeff Keppinger - including one on
an RBI fielder's choice groundout from Humberto Quintero - paved
the way for pinch hitter Ty Wigginton, who hit a three-run homer
to make it 8-5.

"It's a relief (we won), but we tried to help give it back to
them," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "We've just got to cut
down on those errors. I'm very happy about the game. I just
hate to look at our fielding percentage. We've just got to
improve on that defense."

For Wigginton, it was his second career pinch-hit homer and the
Astros' fourth of the season.

Each starter had at least one hit for the Reds, who lost the
first two games of the series, helping them snap a five-game
losing streak and a string of eight straight setbacks to the
Astros dating to last season.

NLAT HOUSTON - SCORING UPDATETHREE-RUN HOME RUN BY TY WIGGINTON (9) TO LEFT WITH 1 OUT IN THE 7TH OFF EDINSON VOLQUEZ SCORED DARIN ERSTAD AND HUMBERTO QUINTERO.CURRENT SCORE: CINCINNATI 8, HOUSTON 5DUE UP FOR HOUSTON: K MATSUI (.280, 1-FOR-3)

NLAT HOUSTON - SCORING UPDATESOLO HOME RUN BY EDWIN ENCARNACION (20) TO LEFT WITH 2 OUT IN THE 5TH OFF CHAD PARONTO.CURRENT SCORE: CINCINNATI 7, HOUSTON 0DUE UP FOR CINCINNATI: J VOTTO (.271, 1-FOR-2, RBI)

NLAT HOUSTON - SCORING UPDATESOLO HOME RUN BY ADAM DUNN (32) TO CENTER WITH 2 OUT IN THE 5TH OFF WANDY RODRIGUEZ.CURRENT SCORE: CINCINNATI 6, HOUSTON 0DUE UP FOR CINCINNATI: E ENCARNACION (.257, 1-FOR-2)

NLAT HOUSTON - SCORING UPDATESOLO HOME RUN BY ADAM DUNN (31) TO RIGHT WITH 1 OUT IN THE 2ND OFF WANDY RODRIGUEZ.CURRENT SCORE: CINCINNATI 1, HOUSTON 0DUE UP FOR CINCINNATI: E ENCARNACION (.256, 19 HR, 42 RBI)